From the time I was old enough to be interested in romantic love, I’ve always said I wanted a love who was like a male version of me, with just enough differences to make things interesting! And I never felt like I truly belonged — not anyplace, or with anyone. There were certainly people with whom I felt comfortable, and deeply loved & trusted, and shared with them a sense of belonging. But, although I don’t believe anyone needs another person to “complete” them, I have felt the most complete as a person in the years since I fell in love with Geoffrey. I absolutely belong with him, profoundly and completely.

And that almost didn’t happen. We were pals who were supposed to have a summer romance, a nice diversion, a delightful little fling and nothing more. Both of us fought the feelings we began having for each another; neither of us wanted to admit to ourselves that not only was love on the menu, but very likely a lifetime of it! And considering how stubborn and tenacious we can both be, that meant a whole lot of resisting those feelings was going on.

Then one evening, his face half-pressed into my neck, he blurted a muffled, “I love you.” I looked at him and said, “What did you just say?” He tentatively repeated it — and he couldn’t possibly have missed the huge amount of relief in my voice as I said, “Oh thank God you said it first!” Four months later, he moved in with me. That was 11 years ago this month, and now I literally can’t imagine life without him.

I don’t know how long he’ll be home, since we currently have exactly zero information on the likelihood of him being deployed in the future (he’s a reservist), but I intend to cherish whatever time we get. And hokey though it may be, I truly believe that, “Le mo ghrása mise agus liomsa mo ghrá” (I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine).

Getting to see my beloved Geoffrey (after a separation of 13 weeks!) was heavenly. I knew his commitment to the US Navy would involve sacrifices on both our parts, but not being able to spend time with my husband has been so rough. I guess that’s part of the price I have to pay for being madly in love. Quite the mixed blessing.

We really didn’t do anything “special” — it was more than enough to just be able to snuggle, and talk, and indulge ourselves in that happy “hey, sailor” way. *GRIN* Besides being crazy in love, I just profoundly like him; he’s wonderful company and absolutely one of my best friends.

We did go to see Lake Michigan, walk along the shore and look at various wildlife (frogs, snakes, bugs, and even saw some deer poo, although we didn’t see the deer themselves). I collected a couple handfuls of pretty rocks along the water line. It was so incredibly WEIRD to be walking along a body of water that looks like the ocean but doesn’t have waves or smell like the sea — really jarring!

The flight out to Chicago was fine, the departure was at nearly midnight and the flight went very smoothly. Coming back, however, was awful. Parents who don’t control their little brats deserve every last bit of the horrid karma that will come their way when the kids get older and start making their parents’ lives a living hell. Who lets a toddler scream, shriek, and holler for FOUR HOURS? Have they not heard of Benadryl?! Pets are sedated for their own good during flights, and children should be too! It would be lovely if airlines would have “no children” flights.

Unfortunately, I don’t know when I’ll get to see Geoffrey again. If he’s sent to San Diego for his final training, he might be able to visit if he gets a long weekend. I’d much rather he came home to visit than me fly out to visit him again; I’d rather not get on a plane again for a good long time. Supposedly he’ll be done with training and home by early to mid-December.

I bought some fabulous yarn at a really neat shop called Village Knit Whiz, and have at least half-a-dozen WIPs (works in progress) that I need to photograph so I can show them off. *grin* But unfortunately, today I am in a fair amount of pain from a migraine and the aftereffects of the surprise tooth extraction I had yesterday. The tooth was cracked all the way through, and came out in pieces — but with any luck I’ll feel much better in just a few days. And it really sucks when I’m on Vicodin but get a migraine anyway!!!

Damn, I miss Geoffrey so much. Absence does sometimes make the heart grow fonder; I love him like I never imagined I would be able to love. He is such a huge blessing to me, and I can’t wait to have him back in my life full-time again.

I’ll just sum up the last 12 months by saying it’s been fraking exhausting, with no end in sight. (Not a complaint, mind you — I absolutely LOVE most parts of my life, and I fully expect it to just keep on getting better! But it is tiring.)

Okay, alright, to hit just the highlights –

bought an awesome 2005 Dodge pickup truck (too bad the damned thing is red, but they were all out of purple), moved a rather large household’s (3 humans & 9 pets) worth of stuff into a rather small condo that already had (1 human & 2 feline) inhabitants, got sucked into Facebook despite years of resistance (because of some stupid farming game, on which I’m currently level 75), cut nearly all of Geoffrey’s waist-length hair off (at his request, so he could get used to having short hair for the first time in 20 years, before he went to Boot Camp), performed my elder spawn’s wedding ceremony on her 21st birthday (oy and vey), had a Yule season frought with tension, helped elder spawn move house when she decided her marriage was A Big Mistake, had to deal with the most gawd-awful high school in the state until I finally told younger spawn that she didn’t have to go back (she’s now enrolled in an awesome “alternative” school & will probably graduate ahead of her year-mates), got to go shooting with my beloved Geoffrey and our friend The Bastidge a few more (awesome) times, managed not to bawl like a stoopid girl when Geoffrey left for US Navy Basic Training (miss him miserably, constantly, fiercely), was only able to visit hubby for 3 days in the last almost-four months and won’t get to see him again for another month yet, have done about 8 times more work on a garden this year than the cumulative total of my prior gardening, got a kick-ass purple netbook for natal anniversary number forty-one and named it Tinhead (shout out to F.M. Busby), have done about 4 times more crocheting this past year than the cumulative total of the previous 21 years since I learned how (and invented the term “yarn porn” to describe my fast-growing crocheting magazine & book collection), discovered my eldest cat has hyperthyroidism and has to be given pills twice daily to keep her alive (gee, that’s fun), and am still adapting to living with FIVE cats (not *quite* as much fun as I’d once thought it might be) and very little sex.

Yeah, I’m at the theoretical best years of a woman’s sexual lifetime, and my husband — light of my life, joy of my heart, fire in my loins — is over 2,100 miles away. (That’s something in the neighborhood of 3,400 km, for the rest of the world.) My new motto? “Navy Wife: Sexually Deprived For Your Freedom”

Hey, but I’m crocheting a lot. (A. LOT.)

I’m vaguely amused at the fact that I’m writing this on what would have been my 23rd wedding anniversary to my first husband, if he hadn’t been such a completely abusive dick who — among many other horrible things — stole & destroyed my most treasured childhood things, tried to take a breastfed newborn permanently away from her mother, lied in court documents & forced me all the way to divorce court, all just to hurt/punish me. (Guess what, Mick? My life is AWESOME now, and yours probably sucks. Karma is a stone bitch, babe.)

Here’s the scariest — nay, the most terrifying — part: if anyone had told me 10 years ago that I would be 1) married, 2) married without being traumatized by it, 3) married to a US Navy Sailor, 4) happy about owning a pickup truck, 5) excited about gardening instead of disliking it, 6) rabidly excited about crochet instead of just liking it, 7) a rather enthusiastic gun owner, and/or 8 ) a registered Republican, I would have said to them with complete and absolute seriousness, “Just how high are you, dude?”

And they say people don’t change. Well, one little thing hasn’t changed one little bit…

I am still a snarky bitch.

Geoffrey and I got married today. Still mind-boggled by it. Details soon, but for now I must collapse…sooo exhausted. It was a pretty amazing day, all told.

Are you fuq’ing KIDDING?! That much money for some dead flowers and a stickpin?!

I’m beside myself. Thank heavens he only ordered corsages for the moms and me, and boutonnieres for himself and his dad. (When I heard boutonnieres are only $8, I said he should have gotten those for all of us.) He ordered purple roses, which is really sweet…but, if they have ANY scent whatsoever, I won’t be able to have a corsage, because rose oil is one of my strongest migraine triggers.

I’m still mind-boggled. EIGHTY-FIVE DOLLARS for a bouquet? (Do you know how many books I could buy with $85?!) Clearly, not liking flowers has saved me a fortune over the years. I will never understand how some people are willing to pay that kind of money for something so incredibly useless.

• Buy a new bra (and probably shoes)
• Get some speakers for my iPod
• Dye my hair (I may be 40 but I refuse to be gray!) & get it trimmed
• Buy the sparkling cider & grape juice
• Finish getting the ceremony written
• Order the corsages for the moms & boutonniere for Geoffrey’s dad
• Check the site for logistical surprises & do a brief walk-through
• Finish sewing the dresses!

It may seem like there’s a lot left to do, but actually most of the preparations are already finished. We have a dinner at Geoffrey’s parents house on Saturday night (eve of the wedding), so all this has to be done by late Saturday afternoon. I am hugely glad that I took these vacation days to prepare, or we would be completely FUBAR.

And my sixpence arrived in the mail today!!! It’s gorgeous, and the lady who took my order was so incredibly nice. When I called to order, she asked if I had a special year in mind, and I said no (they stopped making them 2 years before my birth year, which was the only year which popped to mind). Then she suggested one that’s a century old, to commemorate the year of the wedding, and I thought that was brilliant! So I have a 1909 King Edward VII sixpence for my shoe!

So tonight Geoffrey & I will do a bit of wedding-preparation shopping. Normally I hate all shopping unless it’s for books, but I promised myself a bra from Vicky’s, and I don’t mind shopping there too much. Except for all the ridiculous pink decor.

In family news, my niece is off the ventilator and out of intensive care. She’s still having problems breathing, but the doctors said that is normal when someone is on the ventilator for a long time. I guess she has to cough up all the crap that built up while she couldn’t cough. They finally got a PICC line in, and that way they don’t have to stick her with so many needles. Things look good, except that she’s been running a fever, and doesn’t have much of an immune system at the moment, so they’re watching that very closely. The only visitors she’s allowed to have are her parents & sisters.

In wedding preparation news, my sewing machine decided to go on the fritz last night when I was halfway done making the first bridesmaid dress. I’ve had the damned thing for TEN YEARS and it’s never given me problems. NEVER. So, of course, this gets blamed on Murphy’s Law. I’m going to fiddle with it a bit more, and if that doesn’t help, it’ll be time to locate a repair shop that won’t charge me more than the blasted machine is worth.

Lyse keeps telling me to relax, that I’m on vacation. I’m not, really. I don’t have to go to work, but it’s not exactly a vacation — or, at the most, it’s a working vacation. I’m not even going to think about all the stuff we have yet to finish for the wedding preparations. Gah.

Poor Geoffrey, he’s not even allowed to talk to females during the 8-week boot camp, unless they’re instructors who have spoken to him in the course of training. That will be rough for him, considering that he’s never been all that impressed by the company of his own gender. Between now & then, he’ll be attending weekly training & PT sessions. They already gave him his first official Navy shirt — it says “United States Navy Health Care Team.” Oh crap, we’re both officially in the health care business now. (All we need is to get Lyse a job with the VA Hospital, and we’ll have a trifecta!)

Totally unrelated, I looked my name up on Google (for the first time ever…scary!), and found something I had completely forgotten about from 15 years ago: I got published in the Dear Abby column. I wasn’t asking for advice, mind you, I was giving it. (I’m sure that will shock and amaze those who know me.) If I’d looked a bit harder, I’m sure I could have found the Letters to the Editor that I wrote to various newspapers that also were published in the early 90′s. Not like I was opinionated or anything. *smirk*

I’m continuing to be woefully unprepared for the wedding; reserving the park and making/mailing the invitations are the only things we’ve accomplished thus far. We don’t have a ceremony hammered out. We haven’t ordered the cake, or figured out what other refreshments we’ll have. I don’t even know for certain what I’m wearing yet — or if I’m going to buy it or make it. Good thing I have several days of vacation immediately prior, so I can frantically catch up on everything and turn into a total stress puppy. Hey, I do work well under pressure.

Hell, the only thing keeping me from completely freaking the high holy fuck out is the thought that on June 22nd, I can collapse in whimpers. Also visualizing a certain book cover helps.

I laughed. And explained to her that Geoffrey and I have no intention of ever becoming monogamous. In fact, if we have our way, we’ll eventually be adding to our relationship rather than closing it off! (Ideally we’d like to have Geoffrey’s girlfriend Tam become part of our family and household, should the opportunity arise. We already have firm plans to combine households with Lyse in a few years, and while she’s not romantically involved with either of us, it will still be a lifetime family commitment.)

If I was fertile (which I’m not) and we wanted to have a child (which we don’t), there might be some merit to at least temporary monogamy for Geoffrey and me. But I can’t think of any other reason why it would be beneficial to our relationship to close it off. Sure, we had some serious conflicts involving polyamory during our first few years together, but we got those worked out and our relationship has only become better and stronger for it. The current stability of our relationship has lasted years longer than our prior conflicts and difficulties over ‘other’ relationships — and we both earned our current stability through serious effort, putting our commitment as a top priority, and developing more than a little personal growth.

Most importantly, I have a profoundly deep faith and belief that Geoffrey and I will be together forever, and that nothing (and nobody!) can come between us. So we won’t be including vows of emotional or sexual fidelity in our wedding. “Forsaking all others” does NOT sound like a loving sentiment to us!

Non-monogamy isn’t for everyone, not by far! But monogamy isn’t for everyone, either, and certainly not for us.

No need to check the date; it’s not an April Fools joke. Even though I’ve been pretty negative about marriage for… well, a while, anyway. Not necessarily the institution of marriage, mind you — just the way most people who take part in it screw it up, and the way I believe the government shouldn’t be involved in regulating a holy sacrament (to most, anyway — excepting those few atheists who, one must assume, see it as nothing more than a economic & legal contract). If it’s a religious matter, the government should butt out. If it’s a civil matter, religions should butt out. But having it both ways is just plain stupid.

Geoffrey and I started dating nearly ten years ago, after being pals for a couple years before that. We’ve been living together for nine years. We got handfasted eight years ago (a valid marriage in our religion, which just doesn’t happen to be recognized by the state), and registered with our county as domestic partners nearly seven years ago. I’ve been completely secure for a reaaaally long time that we’ll be together forever, and no piece of paper will make a difference one way or another. So why get married now?

Actually, the better question is why NOT get married? Being legally single isn’t gaining us anything, and it’s literally costing us more than we can afford (in state & federal taxes, and monthly medical insurance premiums). If it weren’t for the money, would we still consider getting married? Sure.

As I approach my 40th birthday, I realize that if something happened to me in the foreseeable future and I wound up in the hospital on life support, the person with the legal right to decide whether or not to pull the plug wouldn’t be Geoffrey. The person with the legal right to decide who finishes raising my minor daughter wouldn’t be Geoffrey. The person with the legal right to plan my funeral and make choices about my personal belongings wouldn’t be Geoffrey. Even if I had legal documents drawn up to cover all those bases, it’s entirely possible they could be overturned. Unless we get married.

I can’t let that happen. Even if I live to be 88 like my grandfather (or 97 like my great-grandfather!), there are plenty of other reasons to go ahead and “take the plunge.” Hell, just the quirky amusement of having all our non-Pagan relatives present to wish us well at a decidedly Pagan wedding ceremony is damned near reason enough. (I’m gleefully twisted that way.)

So. While I don’t have the invitations ready to mail out just yet, we do have a date set and plans in motion. Luckily we have the maturity and determination to do this our way, instead of kowtowing to friends’ or family’s wishes. It’s our wedding and we’re paying for it, so it’s going to happen our way. (Ah, the joy of financial self-determination. Some people should seriously try that out someday.)

So, the details: June 21st, mid-afternoon, with Lyse officiating. My bridal attendants will be the World’s Cutest Wife (my dear friend & next-door neighbor Claire), my eldest daughter, and my dear friend Kylanath. Standing up for Geoffrey will be his stalwart friend Jake, and my younger daughter. Wedding colors will be garnet and deep green, the groom will wear a kilt, and the bride will NOT wear white (or walk down the aisle, or be given away, or any of that traditional bullshit — we’re only using traditions that speak to us personally, and everything else can go hang).

I will, however, have a sixpence in my shoe.